The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945

Pre-1941: Starye Dorogi, town and raion center, Minsk oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Staryje Dorogi, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Staryia Darohi, raen center, Minsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Starye Dorogi is located 107 kilometers (67 miles) south-southeast of Minsk. In 1939, there were 1,085 Jews living there, representing 28.6 percent of the population.¹

In the summer of 1941, slightly more than 1,000 Jews were living in Starye Dorogi. The populace largely believed the official propaganda claiming that in the event of war the enemy would be defeated on foreign territory. According to the testimony of Liubov’ Bukengol’ts, the residents heard about the approaching war, but only the arrival of refugees from Poland put them on guard.² The declaration of war was not followed by an organized evacuation. All men of military age were called up to the Red Army, and their families were left to survive on their own. Part of the population tried to flee the [End Page 1734] town indepen dently, while another part remained, not suspecting the danger that threatened. Those who decided not to leave were motivated chiefly by a desire not to be parted from their property, concerns about health or old age, and the expectation of a rapid victory by the Red Army.

Those who managed to get to the nearest railroad station, just outside of Starye Dorogi in the direction of Osipo vichi, before June 26, 1941, succeeded in escaping. They were among the refugees sent to Central Asia, the Urals, and Siberia. Other Jews left on foot or used motorized or horse-drawn transport (carts). Mania Ansolis was saved because she was studying at the Belorussian State University in Minsk and was unable to return to her parents in Starye Dorogi. She walked to Gomel’ and from there traveled to Kirgizia. Elena Kuptsova, with her mother and grandmother, walked to Rogachev and from there traveled by various means to Syzran’ in the Kuibyshev oblast’. Basia Dubina traveled to her mother in Starye Dorogi from Moscow in December 1940, on maternity leave. On May 19, 1941, she gave birth to a son. On June 24, with her baby in her arms, and together with her parents and relatives of her husband, she set out for Bobruisk. The family managed to board a train only in Orsha, and from there they were evacuated to Kazakhstan. Some Jews found that they were encircled and were forced to return home.³

Starye Dorogi was captured by the Germans on June 28, 1941. German authority was exercised by a series of local military commandants. In October 1941, units of the 1st Battalion, Infantry Regiment 691, were quartered in the town, which at that time was in the operational area of the 339th Infantry Division.⁴ A local police force was established during the summer, based in the building of the former militia district branch on Pervomaiskaia Street. Among those recruited were people who were dissatisfied with the Soviet authorities. The head of the police was a man named Subtsel’nyi.

The ghetto was established on the grounds of the former Jewish school on Kirov Street. Along with the school, several houses were fenced in and guarded. There were approximately 750 people in the ghetto. The Jews were ordered to wear yellow armbands and forbidden to interact with non-Jewish Belorussians or Russians.⁵

With the arrival of the Germans, the attitude of local inhabitants of Starye Dorogi towards the Jews changed. Some no longer hid their antisemitism and stole from the Jews, while others felt sorry for them and even attempted to help them. The Nazis cruelly persecuted anyone attempting to help or rescue the Jews. Doctor Shapelko concealed two Jewish women in the hospital, but when it became known, the women were shot and the doctor was hanged. The agronomist Kunbin and Anna Koroleva were killed for concealing Jews and supporting the partisans.⁶

Before the mass slaughter, there were only individual murders of Jews, Komsomol members, and Soviet activists in Starye Dorogi.⁷ Among the first victims were Dr. Livshits and his sons. According to the testimony of the prisoner of war Sipnov (a Russian), who had escaped from Starye Dorogi, a group of Jews, including women and children, were driven into the river by the Nazis, who cried out, “Swim, you dirty kikes!” But when they tried to reach the other side of the river, the Germans opened fire. No one returned from the river alive.⁸ Scores of Jews in Starye Dorogi were shot on August 6, 1941.⁹

A major Aktion was carried out in Starye Dorogi on January 19, 1942. A punitive detachment, with police assistance, drove the remaining Jews from the ghetto along the Bobruisk-Slutsk highway to a sand quarry near Kasharka. The victims were made to undress in the bitter cold and then were shot at a previously prepared site. On the same day, Jewish families and individuals were shot in the nearby villages of Verkhutino, Gorki, Paskova Gorka, and Iazyl’, in the Starye Dorogi raion.¹⁰ A German report in early February stated that as of February 1, 1942, there were still 239 Jews in Rayon Staryje Dorogi, but it is not clear if this reflected the number still alive before or after the above-mentioned Aktions.¹¹

The survivors from Starye Dorogi consisted only of a few dozen young Jews, who managed for a variety of reasons to escape the town before the liquidation of the ghetto and joined the partisans.¹² Among those joining the partisans was Samuil Gol’dberg. He was accepted into the Kirov detachment on the recommendation of Aleksei Ivanov, who had been a doctor before the war, a native of Podares’e in the Starye Dorogi raion, and a former lodger of Gol’dberg’s.¹³

Starye Dorogi was liberated on June 28, 1944. A number of Jews returned to the town from their places of evacuation. It was decided to put them into surviving houses and return to them any belongings they could prove had been theirs.